In the mesh room you can set how many displays there are by the little buttons on the right top side, but I've found four to be very useful. Why not make one snake in the spline modeler, make a head in the mesh modeler, convert/ copy the snake into the mesh modeler, and link it to the head model (i.e. empty a polygon where you want the base of the snake, and attach the snake to it). (You could then bone the snakes so you can animate)